converting uppercase to lowercase characters

[Klaas D. Eenkhoorn]

dear all
How do i convert a word written in all uppercase caracters to a word with only the first character uppercase and the rest lowercase ?

example:

"WOORD IN EEN ZIN" -> "Woord In Een Zin"

Thanks in advance

kl@@s

[H.Merijn Brand (procura · Accepted solution]

lt09:/home/merijn 107 > echo WOORD IN EEN ZIN | perl -lne'print join" ",map{ucfirst lc}split'
Woord In Een Zin
lt09:/home/merijn 108 > echo WOORD IN EEN ZIN | perl -pe's/(\w+)/\L\u$1/g'
Woord In Een Zin
lt09:/home/merijn 109 >

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Klaas D. Eenkhoorn]

Line 1 gives no output and line 2 does not change the caps.

am i doing something wrong ?

klaas

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Do you have an `old' perl?

if you get

# perl -v

This is perl, version 4.0

$RCSfile: perl.c,v $$Revision: 4.0.1.8 $$Date: 1993/02/05 19:39:30 $
Patch level: 36

Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1991, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 4.0 source kit.

you have an ancient perl installed on /usr/contrib/bin, and that version does not support the fact that the script (the -e part) is tight to the -e option without space separation :(

a5:/u/usr/merijn 101 > echo WOORD IN EEN ZIN | perl -pe's/(\w+)/\L\u$1/g'
Woord In Een Zin
a5:/u/usr/merijn 102 > echo WOORD IN EEN ZIN | perl4 -pe's/(\w+)/\L\u$1/g'
WOORD IN EEN ZIN
a5:/u/usr/merijn 103 > echo WOORD IN EEN ZIN | perl4 -pe 's/(\w+)/\L\u$1/g'
Woord In Een Zin
a5:/u/usr/merijn 104 >

If you only have that perl4, just add a space, as above example shows.
My advice would be to chack if you have other versions of perl installed, and move /usr/contrib/bin to the *end* of your $PATH.
Almost every perl script snippet posted on the forum expects at least perl-5.005_3, and I only use perl-5.8.5

more modern perls are usually installed as either /usr/local/bin/perl or in /opt/perl/bin/perl

[ Leuk om weer een nieuwe nederlandstalige te mogen verwelkomen :) ]

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Pete Randall]

echo "WOORD IN EEN ZIN" | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]"


Pete

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Pete, that would make the complete line lower

Not what he wants.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Pete Randall]

Right you are, Merijn. I didn't read carefully enough.


Pete

[Geoff Wild]

If you do run Pete's, this will capitalize the first letter of every word:

#! /bin/sed -f

# capit.sed -- capitalize words
#

# split words into \n word
s/[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]\+/\
&/g

# add conversion table: \n\n table
# table format:
s/$/\
\
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz/

# subs every lower case first char
ta
:a
s/\n\(.\)\(.*\n\n.*\)\([A-Z]\)\1/\3\2\3\1/
ta

# cleanup...
s/\n\n.*//
s/\n//g



Rgds...Geoff

[john korterman]

Hi,

You can (mis)use ksh special features, e.g.:

#!/usr/bin/sh
LIST="WOORD IN EEN ZIN"
function convert
{
FUP="$1"
END_F=${FUP#?}
REST_LOW=$(echo "$END_F" | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]")
typeset -u BEG_F=${FUP%$END_F}
echo "$BEG_F$REST_LOW"
}
for i in $LIST
do
convert "$i"
done

regards,
John K.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Beautifull all those scripts, but I still cannot imagine people actually write/use scripts that long if a simple

perl -pe 's/(\w+)/\L\u$1/g'

is all you need, and I even showed it works in perl4, which is available on every HP-UX box older than 11i (11.11 and up have perl5 installed by default)

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn